d23:You do realize this means there will now be absolutely no one at all that suffers any penalty... except the people of WV, of course.

The Federal Prosecutors are talking about "piercing the corporate veil", in other words prosecuting the actual executives personally for this instead of the company.

The US Attorney for that area lives in Charleston, and was personally affected by this, I think he's personally irate with Freedom Industries and is going to see if he can land every one of those SOB's in Federal PMITA prison.

Back in the day the guy who owned that company would have gotten lynched, possibly tarred and feathered. Now he goes bankrupt and gets to go setup another company and pull this shiat some place else. This is like his third time doing that isn't it?

How exciting! This enables the Job Creators to make a clean break from the overbearing regulators who are crushing the free market. Now they can move their assets to another corporate structure, and continue adding Freedom Chemicals to water in other places. Yay Land of Opportunity!

Silverstaff:The US Attorney for that area lives in Charleston, and was personally affected by this, I think he's personally irate with Freedom Industries and is going to see if he can land every one of those SOB's in Federal PMITA prison.

Which is basically the same reason Bernie Maddoff went to jail and Jamie Dimon is still livin' large. Madoff stole from the people who mattered, so he got the full force of the law. Dimon simply farked over millions who can't turn proper regulation into a personal vendetta.

Nana's Vibrator:I would just love to see the maintenance, safety records, and bookkeeping practices they employed just prior to announcing the spill./no I wouldn't. Someone just tell me they were corrupt.

They hadn't been inspected in twenty years. Draw your own conclusions.

In a previous thread, someone mentioned that they were a subsidiary ultimately of the Koch Brothers. I wouldn't be surprised if they were, but is there proof? Others in that thread were skeptical too. Was any proof provided that they're at the far end of the line?

Diogenes:The chemical, 4-methylcyclohexane methanol, got into water supplies after it leaked out of a storage tank and poured into the Elk River near an intake for a West Virginia American Water Co. treatment plant.

Officials detected the 7,000-gallon leak eight days ago, on January 9. More than 7,000 gallons of the chemical, which is used to clean coal, leaked into the river, according to officials.

cretinbob:vygramul: See? There IS a death penalty for companies! (After the execs and decision-makers have taken home their 8-figure golden parachutes.)

Well, yeah. He'll make more money going bankrupt than staying open and getting the fark sued out of him. If the company doesn't exist, they can't pay out see. So if he puts all the money in his pocket and starts a new companny with the same assests doing the same thing, he's a reall 'Murican hero.3

I hope the judge sees through this assholes game and tells him to sit the fark down and take it up the ass like he needs to.

We should require that all corporations carry liability insurance that will pay for environmental cleanups and any civil or criminal penalties in the event of bankruptcy. It might help reduce the instances of this sort of thing happening if corps had insurance companies looking over their shoulder and raising their premiums whenever they saw lax maintenance standards. And the execs might find moving on to that new company more difficult when the new one becomes basically uninsurable for any reasonable amount of money.

So if you think you can get out from under your crushing student loan debt by declaring bankruptcy, forget about it. But avoid responsibility for contaminating the drinking water for over 300,000 people for a week or more by declaring bankruptcy, absolutely.

mgshamster:kbronsito: I was trying to remember on Jared Diamond's Collapse... wasn't there a chapter entirely about how mining companies aren't actually all that profitable due to regulations and having to pay clean up costs so basically what they do is to squeeze out as much profit as they can while ignoring regulations until they pollute the fark out of something or a bunch of workers die in an accident and then they file for bankruptcy. And the only reason why mining states aren't more farked up to the point of having their society's collapse due to pollution is because the federal government picks up the tab for clean up.

They're called superfund sites.

And yes, lots of companies do this.

I was just thinking that this really isn't an accident. It's a business model.But a bunch of questions/assumptions that I'm trying to figure out.... this would then mean that our minerals are provided more cheaply to the businesses that buy them because we are subsidizing the clean up part of the business and they also cut corners on prevention? If we actually somehow close this loophole that created this model, would the impact of more expensive minerals to the national economy be more or less than what we spend having the Federal government clean up? In general could that difference enough to justify the environmental damage?And instead of having the Federal government come in after the damage is done... would there not be advantages to have the federal government pay for all the expenses related to preventing the damage? Although... wouldn't the purchase of any equipment for prevention be deductible business expenses already? So does it even make sense to suggest that the government should pay for those (maybe subsidize prevention further in some other way... providing capital for it perhaps)? What I guess I mean is that there's gotta be a way to provide a better incentive for the companies to actually comply with the regulations instead of having this bankruptcy mining business model sham... or maybe we need to pay more for our minerals. Is this still making sense. I'm trying to solve this whole mining problem here on fark... where complex political and sociological problems are constantly solved.

DoctorCal:AgentPothead: Back in the day the guy who owned that company would have gotten lynched, possibly tarred and feathered. Now he goes bankrupt and gets to go setup another company and pull this shiat some place else. This is like his third time doing that isn't it?

AgentPothead:Back in the day the guy who owned that company would have gotten lynched, possibly tarred and feathered. Now he goes bankrupt and gets to go setup another company and pull this shiat some place else. This is like his third time doing that isn't it?

kbronsito:I was trying to remember on Jared Diamond's Collapse... wasn't there a chapter entirely about how mining companies aren't actually all that profitable due to regulations and having to pay clean up costs so basically what they do is to squeeze out as much profit as they can while ignoring regulations until they pollute the fark out of something or a bunch of workers die in an accident and then they file for bankruptcy. And the only reason why mining states aren't more farked up to the point of having their society's collapse due to pollution is because the federal government picks up the tab for clean up.

I was trying to remember on Jared Diamond's Collapse... wasn't there a chapter entirely about how mining companies aren't actually all that profitable due to regulations and having to pay clean up costs so basically what they do is to squeeze out as much profit as they can while ignoring regulations until they pollute the fark out of something or a bunch of workers die in an accident and then they file for bankruptcy. And the only reason why mining states aren't more farked up to the point of having their society's collapse due to pollution is because the federal government picks up the tab for clean up.

MadCat221:Diogenes: The chemical, 4-methylcyclohexane methanol, got into water supplies after it leaked out of a storage tank and poured into the Elk River near an intake for a West Virginia American Water Co. treatment plant.

Officials detected the 7,000-gallon leak eight days ago, on January 9. More than 7,000 gallons of the chemical, which is used to clean coal, leaked into the river, according to officials.

Silverstaff:d23: You do realize this means there will now be absolutely no one at all that suffers any penalty... except the people of WV, of course.

The Federal Prosecutors are talking about "piercing the corporate veil", in other words prosecuting the actual executives personally for this instead of the company.

The US Attorney for that area lives in Charleston, and was personally affected by this, I think he's personally irate with Freedom Industries and is going to see if he can land every one of those SOB's in Federal PMITA prison.

Right up until the moment someone hands him a big, fat check, I'm sure he has every intention of prosecuting to the fullest extent of the law.

They aren't really off the hook. They are incurring expenses at a rate that prevents them from servicing loans, paying vendors, etc. and Chapter 11 is a court-sanctioned way to prioritize how they spend what they have until they restructure loans and/or start bringing money in again.